02/28/2018

Luna Bliss Wants You to Drop Acid So You Can Accept Tech Cults

Compare and contrast:

What I actually wrote inworld to Luna Bliss:

[2018/02/26 20:48] Prokofy Neva: Hi, I didn't realize you were such a tech cultist, good Lord. Now here's what you have to read: https://community.secondlife.com/forums/topic/418728-encroachment-on-robin-loop/[2018/02/26 20:48] Second Life: User not online - message will be stored and delivered later.[2018/02/26 20:49] Prokofy Neva: the person in that thread is named "animats" -- he's a total asshole -- oh, unless you think rape RP is fine, you may, I don't know, tech cultism often goes together with those extremities of depravity as well. Well, I don't want it on my lawn, dear : )[2018/02/26 20:49] Second Life: User not online - message will be stored and delivered later.[2018/02/26 20:50] Prokofy Neva: you also have to see how insanely wrong and crazy the Lindens are here - the road isn't repaired, it was never my fault, my customers are struggling now, animats is a total freaking asshole, get a grip Luna, I thought you were better than this http://3dblogger.typepad.com/second_thoughts/2018/02/a-linden-injustice-robin-loop-road.html[2018/02/26 20:50] Second Life: User not online - message will be stored and delivered later.

Her description of my comment in a longish post that not only misrepresents my short comment, but goes on to other loony stuff:

Well Prokofy I'm not sure what that screed you just emitted in response to what I wrote is about. Negative experiences you've encountered with people espousing various religious positions and political persuasions throughout the years I guess, as if it's shocking to you that people are not perfect as they go about their lives?Your most recent email was very obnoxious -- you accused me of being a facist and a tech-cultist, somehow supporting the punks who grief you, as well as charging me with harassing you "with ideas that give myself, group, or cult power but are abusive to others". It's pretty sickening how you turn on people when they don't agree with your technophobia.Please, get this fact straight -- I don't believe technology is all bad, and I also believe what these griefers do to you is wrong. Both of these facts can exist at the same time, even on one thread.

You totally misrepresented what I advised you to 'open your mind' about....I specifically said it related to technology. You know, when you got off on your conspiracy theory about bots/AI/coding, and how LL is in league with whatever you fear is taking over the world. Again, it's a shame you can't see there are good uses of technology, and that we do have control through laws to keep a check on inappropriate uses. Most importantly, if you continue to be influenced by this conspiracy theory when you encounter confusing technology it's difficult to evaluate what's really going on and hence fix the problem.

Anyway, I'm just a woman who read the Bible as a child and felt attracted to the message of love, and in later years appreciated the essence or core of this teaching despite all the cultural cr*p piled on top of it, and despite all the ways people misused it throughout the centuries.The message of love rings true for Christian Mystics and for all Mystical groups East & West that focus on essence -- the goal is to attempt to become a better person by becoming more loving -- to actually attempt to change the very core of one's self.There is a lessening of ego in East & West Mystical traditions so that one sees the bigger picture to a greater degree (you have the ego dissolution concept totally wrong btw because when one has less ego they are stronger and less susceptible to cultural brainwashing).

On the way to knowing one's deeper self and expressing more love in life there are tools to use to aid in transformation that I am calling 'mind hacks' -- meditating, praying, doing art, using VR to enhance empathy for others, various therapies, and ingesting mushrooms with a spiritual guide to burst through the rigid mind structures that keeps our consciousness in a kind of patterned groove where habits and misconceptions rule.

I lived in a Yoga ashram for some years, and although I participated in the outside world by attending college during some of those years I did not watch the news. When I finally left the ashram I began viewing the news again and it was very strange -- all the same types of wars, skirmishes, and political nonsense was going on the same as before but in different locations -- only the names had changed.So that lead me to believe that each individual person needs to change in order for the world to change. All this arguing over politics is useless. In fact, I think it serves as a distraction for the real change that needs to happen -- inside ourselves.

I used to buy scenes at Luna Bliss' store. I would donate to her tip jar for her cause, which I believed involved an ill daughter.

I remember on the old forums she wasn't particularly my favourite as she tended toward the loony tech type but I still thought her products were worth buying. I usually bracket out a person's views, lifestyle etc in the marketplace and buy their products if I like them -- with the exception of a few toxic types like Trompe L'oeil.

I guess I will have to add Luna Bliss to the do-not-buy list because she's just fucking crazy here.

She was dogging me over several threads trying to do missionary work, impose on me her tech beliefs which are thread-bare, banal, and tawdry. She's not terribly bright. That's often the problem with people who think they are brains if they can do digital creations or code. But they may be shallow and easily swayed by whatever they find on the spiritual smorgasbord of the Internet.

I'll add some more of this threat that Lindens will close:

Oh I was just being hyperbolically silly by recommending that you take LSD while strapped to a VR headset. I was trying to advise that you need to "open your mind" regarding some of the positive uses of technology, whereas it seems you thought I was telling you to get away from the pain via some drug induced coma. Anyway, I wanted to say 'ayahuasca' instead of 'LSD',but couldn't remember how to spell the thing.

Cultures throughout the ages have used psychoactive substances to open their minds, and they are not always a way to escape from reality despite some using them in that way. Ayahuasca in South America, and peyote by the Native peoples in the US, for example.I'm very interested in 'mind hacks'...ways to change consciousness through the use of meditation, expanded states of consciousness when creating art, VR Experiences, and psychoactive substances.The Western mind especially seems very out of balance (too egotistical and separate from the rest of the world) and is unable to exist in the present and be happy (in a state of love), but instead always grasps for more -- it is way too commercially focused and I worry what the end result of this excessively competitive, patriarchal mindset will be.

Um, no, I don't have to take drugs or put in a VR headset to be a full human being with curiosity, critical thinking, and ability to look at a wide variety of conflicting ideas or ideas that I don't agree with. Ayahuasca is no better than LSD in terms of being harmful to many who have taken it, and advertisement of their good aspects is selective and agenda-driven.

And, yeah, I know. I've read many of the books about Eastern cultures and also about Latin American cultures, for example the famous Don Juan books by Carlos Castenada, which get a lot more criticism today than in the years they came out. I may be quite a bit older than you and have read for 50 years on these subjects.

I don't need to "open my mind" so that my brains fall out, having seen that Eastern collectivist ideas and ideas of dissolution of the individual are used by the communist and other ideologies for mass crimes against humanity. You may not have read about that aspect of it.

I find that those claiming that they aren't grasping for more -- and have now "mastered" Buddhism or because they've imbibed some part of a more complex foreign idea rather selectively -- are the worst grabbers of all. I wish I had a dollar for every avatar over 13 years who has come on to my Tibet sim either to squat and overprim and harass others, or move in, overprim, and profess love of the Tibetan cause even as their profiles are filled with BDSM and rape RP groups or who harass others on the sim, or 100 other problems. It's amazing how these Eastern ideas -- the ideal of Tibet -- attract some of the worst elements of Western culture. That I keep the sim open is due to the wonderful people who were at its founding and built the monastery, and who sell in the marketplaces, and who come and go with good will and learn from the Tibetan teachings or help pay for the sim which runs at a loss by renting. "Free Tibet" has sure given me a lot of insights about humanity, that's for sure!

By the way the SL Public Land Group which I founded and support along with others has a number of spiritual sites, so check them out. One is a Native American site with peyote dreams and such. There is a Druids' Grove. There are Witches of Belarus. All kinds of things. Precisely because I have read widely, traveled the world widely in RL but as I said: East or West, home is best: East is East and West and West and never the twain shall meet.

Silicon Valley abounds with example of these sorts semi-imported Eastern ideologies or hacked Western ideologies, or scrambled amalgams of all kinds of abusive things like Est or Ray Kurziweil or extremist humanism -- which run rampant in Second Life with little critical treatment.

"Mind hacks" are all too often a pathway to subjugation of others, harassment of others, intolerance of others. I'm for all human rights for all. I find that is a good way concept to apply to any ideology, East or West, whether alt-right neo-fascism or alt-left anti-fa, both of which are abusive, authoritarian, and commit crimes against others.

I often find that people invoking "the Eastern mind" in the Western concept merely are seeking a way to take power over others, discredit them, undermine their own valuations. I often find that there is little appreciation for the benefits of the Judeo-Christian civilization and Western canon these days by those who in fact benefit most from their fruits on college campuses.

I often find on the forums, too, that people who slam you with outrageous hostility are oblivious of their nature and faults and are seldom called out for this; when you oppose them, they imagine you are the hostile one; when they are indeed hostile, they pretend they are not. So it's a very bad-faith settings, these forums.

The forums are *just barely tolerable* for helpful people like Whirly Fizzle who answer you with actual facts, insights, helpful tips, etc. Qie is another one with facts, actual experiments to find answers, etc. and there are others. But even they cannot resist piling on. Spend a day with a techno-furry communist spamming your sim with hideous obscene and gross pictures in particles, or spamming people on other sims with alts impersonating you spouting racist garbage, and you may not find them so hilarious or imagine that somebody tilts at windmills.

Comments

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Prokofy, I fear there has been a grave misunderstanding between us.
I entered into the thread to challenge you regarding the demonization you frequently exhibit toward all technology. When I spoke of animats related to artificial intelligence I was referring to nanobiotechnology, and I asked you to look the word 'animats' up for a clearer understanding. This refers to the way 'tiny robots' could help us medically in the future, and is a very exciting field. Instead, you lumped me in with some sort of technocommunism ideas of yours by accusing me of being part of some kind of techno-cult, and I received the following message from you, which you failed to mention here in your blog:

" Prokofy Neva: Coming into a thread about finding facts regarding griefers,
and spouting your theories, which I don't support at all as they are fascistic, is a
form of harassment itself. It's not about you "disagreeing with my ideas." It's
about harassment with your theories that only support griefing in the end, in a
thread seeking ways to curb them. So I saw what you did there. It's not merely a
derail. It's a form of harassment with ideas that you seek because you imagine they
give you power or your group power or some cult power but they are abusive to
others. You have not been democratically elected in a liberal democracy under the
rule of law to provide your "help" on "AI"."

Basically, you are saying here that I'm an abuser...a facist, a harasser, supporting griefing, part of some sick cult, trying to circumvent democracy or rule of law. THIS was what I responded to. I guess you forgot about the above message from you?